The forest air was cool.
Birds moved through the branches overhead, chirping across each other in overlapping, careless threads, and everything in that place carried the same signal. Life. Ordinary, uninterrupted, unafraid. The light came down green through the canopy, soft and filtered, nothing like the white hammer of the plain. Leaves shifted in a slow breeze. Shadows of wings crossed the mossy ground in brief, flickering patterns.
A blue butterfly came off one of the trees and landed on my arm.
It passed straight through it and settled on the grass below, wings opening and closing once, unbothered.
Nothing here suggested outside the walls. Not the light, not the sound, not the temperature. And this was outside. It had to be. There were no walls yet, not the way I understood them. The ground under my feet felt solid in a way the libra never quite managed.
My father appeared.
